IBM attributed its ability to lure customers away to its Migration Factory program introduced four years ago. Since that time, IBM says it's been able help nearly 2,200 companies switch to IBM systems from Sun and HP.

All in all, it's been a good year for IBM. The company managed to increase the revenue generated from Power Systems from competitive displacements of customers in the fourth quarter of 2009 to $200 million, which amounts to more than $600 million in sales from UNIX competitive takeouts for IBM in 2009, the company said.